ESCP Europe

In this update, the author presents a model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we've learned from "career experts"--and is tailor-made for changing careers in today's uncertain world. Career transition is not a linear path toward some predetermined identity, according to Ibarra, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become. Successful reinvention comes not from deciphering and analyzing our past, but from inventing and testing our possible futures. Using new examples of people in different stages of a career transition, the author identifies the three critical strategies : experiment with new professional activities and identities, interact in new networks of people, and make sense of what is happening in light of emerging possibilities.